


Trompe L’Oeil: A Triptych

by Simply8Steps



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: (which you know - there were many), Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, character introspection, post-Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 09:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11055810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Simply8Steps/pseuds/Simply8Steps
Summary: An "artisan" series of sorts - namely, characters' introspective thoughts on life, death, and hope.





	Trompe L’Oeil: A Triptych

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted for Month of Love VI over at the LJ AR community 05/05/2009. There was originally a piano piece attached to this, but it's too embarrassing for me to share at the moment. LOL
> 
> Additional Note: Trompe L’Oeil is an art technique that basically uses perspective in a 2D image/artwork to trick the viewers' eyes into believing that it's a 3D object (aka: the optical illusion of depth).

I.

Saul Tigh stared at the drink in hand, glimmering in the spotlight of a dim room.

_The drink – the light at the end of the tunnel – a temporary solace._ He smirks before gulping down the last of the liquid. Once, as a young man (had he ever been a young man?), he might have choked. Now, the burning is hardly registered.

He is a frakking cylon. He had killed Ellen for frakking a cylon, for betraying them to the frakking cylons, and he is one himself. _Frak me._ This must be what they call poetic justice.

And now, the old man knows, and the Six in the brig is pregnant with his child (probably). The next shot gets knocked back before long, even as he sits alone in this room.

He’s a cylon… but he’s a man… a human to be more specific. He’s the XO. He’s Saul Tigh. That was all he ever needed, but ever since the ship started singing the frakking song, he’s been wondering if this farce of an identity would fall apart around him at any moment.

What did it matter anyway? What he was… Who he was?

Sometimes Tigh thinks, for that reason alone, he loves Bill Adama. The Old Man – the historian of his humanity – the common link that made all those memories real. The crags mapping his face also marked Tigh’s own adventures, and sometimes, when he was drunk to the third plane of the Underworld, and time lost all meaning, he could be human again.

Maybe.  
  
Hopefully. (Bah! Hope.)

Probably not.

 

II.

Blood.

Guts.

Eyes.

Cottle didn’t blink. Not on New Caprica. Not now with Sickbay filled with the writhing bodies of those humans and…

He only rushes one bed to the other, doing all he could to stay true to his oath and put these dang stupid living beings back together.

_Done. Next crisis (please… heh)._

The cigarette smoke sunk into his lungs, dimming and highlighting every sharp angle, every cry for help, every empty stare of those lost…

_Inhale. Exhale._

He stopped looking for the line long ago. _The Simon model was bleeding out from his shrapnel wounds… Cottle stared at his limited supplies: a few more vials of hemostatic agents, low on fibrin glue, dirty bundles of cloth bandages still in need of washing. A hand shoots out. A broken voice reaches his ears through the haze of dirty air and blood-sodden mud. “I’m… a doctor too… don’t bother… just resurrect... painkiller… the Six…”_

Nothing to be done… Just two doctors talking (term used loosely) about life and death. Human and...

Cottle washes his hands and preps for surgery, grinding his sixth cigarette of the day into a kidney dish.

As long as he still had the cigs, he’d be fine without the line. There was really no difference:

_screams_

_pain_

_tears._

 

 

III.

Black.

Red.

Blue.

Laura dreams at night – of her apartment in Caprica – of a canvas stretching endlessly in front of her. Paints and brushes litter her personal space, colors on her skin – the lingering scent of turpentine clings.

She dreams of wood – in her hands flowing in parallel motion, guiding the bristles against the tightly stretched cloth.

It only occurs to her later that the corners of the frame still exist.

The color canvassing.

The canvas colored.

Her hand guides, and the brush follows, and she fills areas and areas – volumes and volumes of empty space – with the image of _Earth-that-should-have-been_ The images paint (the painted images?) show the ideal, not the reality (not their reality).

The process[ion] continues endlessly, a spiraling cycle, and she almost screams, but a firm, calloused hand covers hers, stopping the unceasing motion. Supporting new ones.

Another arm wraps around her waist, and together, something different is created. Not quite as much what Earth had been hoped to be, but pure colors – red, orange, yellow – blending richly and melting borders, forming horizons. Pink, rose, and the barest hint of sky-blue… _Heavenly_. There is warmth there, and not-quite-comfort-but-still-close-enough-to-make-do.

Together, creating something better that _feels_ so good, she could believe that they would make it reality.

_Sky._

_Grass._

Earth.

Life.

 

_**Fin.**_   


End file.
